Judd Gregg: Elizabeth Warren’s gift to Donald Trump

In the Christmas spirit of giving and in the New Year’s spirit of renewal, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has given President Trump the best of both those worlds.

She is running for president.

In the first two years of his tenure, Trump has shredded the coalition that allowed him to win the presidency by carrying states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

{mosads}Mainstream Republicans and conservative independents who put the president over the top in those key states and others have come to find many of his policies — and especially his demeanor — discouraging.

These are voters who for the most part stand by principles that have guided them for a long time.

They believe in fiscal responsibility, a value Trump has never embraced. To the contrary, he has disparaged it, running up the highest non-crisis deficit in our history and putting the nation on a path of $1 trillion deficits as far as the eye can see.

These voters also believe in the same tenets as Gen. James Mattis, who recently resigned as secretary of Defense. Those tenets are not complicated. They involve supporting your allies and opposing your enemies. But this is a view that Trump has put aside as he belittles our traditional friends and appears enamored with questionable leaders such as Vladimir Putin of Russia.

Most importantly, these voters believe that our presidents should speak to the better nature of our nation, lead with dignity and resolve, and attempt to unite us in the goal of improving our culture. They should protect the values that give our people faith in America as a land of opportunity for all.

For many of these swing voters, the president’s performance has been sorely lacking. He consciously rejects the principles they revere.

As a result, the likelihood of his carrying the states that hold the electoral votes needed for reelection has been greatly diminished.

He unquestionably still has the adulation of his populist base. He speaks their language. But they are less than 40 percent of the needed electorate. Their support is insufficient to win a second term.

Trump needs someone to run against who is even less appealing than himself. Such an opponent would allow him to draw back into his corner those Republicans and independents who determine the outcome in so many of the critical states.

Trump must have awakened after learning of Warren’s decision to seek the Democratic nomination, and said, “Thank you” (presuming he ever does say those words).

{mossecondads}As in a Greek play, Warren has appeared as a deus ex machina. She is landing in the midst of all the chaos of the Trump presidency with a message that makes his tenure seem rational and orderly.

She is an elitist of the first order. She goes forth into battle with the absolute confidence that, because she and her followers are smarter than almost all other Americans, she has the right to dictate how everyone else should live.

“Just stand back,” she could pronounce to Main Street America, “and let me and my people guide your everyday life. Put simply, we know better than you.”

She is a socialist. She has no admiration for the market economy that has given America its dynamism throughout its history.

Rather, she turns to the economics of political correctness that says those who govern know best how to create wealth; and those who work should be appreciative that she and her minions are there to redistribute the result of their efforts.

Her means and methods will lead the United States in the direction of the economies of Cuba, Venezuela and Argentina.

She also has little use for the separation of powers nor for the purposes of Article One of the Constitution that gives Congress control over the bureaucracy.

It was her genius that structured the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

This is an organization that was designed by Warren with such purity of purpose that she felt it needed to answer to no one, least of all Congress.

Its leadership was appointed without recourse or oversight from Congress and its funding was structured to bypass congressional review.

In fact, so blatantly dictatorial was its structure as conceived and executed by Warren that when it was challenged by the new administration, the leadership of the CFPB attempted a bureaucratic coup d’état. They proclaimed that they had no obligation to respond to elected officials.

Warren very simply is the voice of everything most Americans outside of Washington and Harvard are not.

If this country in 2020 is faced with a choice between Trump, with all his idiosyncrasies and narcissism; and Warren, who represents a view antithetical to the values of mainstream America, then Trump gets reelected.

Thus, Warren’s de facto declaration of candidacy is a good start to the new year for the president.

Of course, if Donald Trump really wants to be reelected against any of the 20 or so Democrats who might challenge him, he ought to consider acting more like a Republican president.

He could display some understanding of the basic Republican and middle American value of fiscal responsibility; some willingness to work with our friends who have stood by us for years; and some respect for the importance of the office he holds.

If he could somehow find it within himself to do these things, his chances of reelection would soar.

Judd Gregg (R) is a former governor and three-term senator from New Hampshire who served as chairman and ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, and as ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Foreign Operations subcommittee.